By the middle of the week, the kids were starting to get worn out. After the late-night Kung Fu and all the physical activities, the kids were showing some signs of fatigue. I was getting worried that they weren’t having much fun on Wednesday, but by the end of the day, they had perked back up.
I had a lot of trouble getting Tommy and Ryan out of bed. In fact, they barely made it to the morning formation. I guess they were up half the night goofing around. I remember those days when I was a kid when you could talk all day to your best friend about nothing and just have the best time.
We did finally make it to formation and breakfast. The kids had some trouble with the powdered eggs, but again, I thought they were okay — particularly for camp food after a strenuous day. After breakfast, we were off to high COPE. Normally, they would have done a second day of low COPE, but since many of the Venturers had other activities scheduled for Thursday and Friday, Scott wanted the kids to get a taste of high COPE. The kids all got to do three events, while taking turns belaying and helping in other ways. The three events were the giant’s ladder, which was meant to be a two-person, cooperative event, a traverse of a two-rope bridge, and a zip line.
The first two people up the giant’s ladder were Maddie and Sammy — the shortest kids in the group. While they both struggles somewhat, they helped each other get up the ladder. Sammy was actually able to shinny up the cable between the rungs!
Erin did a very nice job helping her partner up the ladder. He was struggling a bit, but Erin didn’t seem to mind the height and helped push him up to the next run.
I don’t know if the kids appreciate these scout experiences. I didn’t get to do things like this until I joined the Army. How much easier Beast Barracks and the Infantry Officer Basic Course would have been if I had had these opportunities!
The instructors said that to be an instructor you have to be able to traverse the giant’s ladder solo. Tom basically negotiated the ladder himself while helping Ryan, who has an injured shoulder. Tommy and Ryan were trying to set a record pace for the day. Tommy really made the ladder look effortless.
Looking a bit tired after two and a half strenuous days and a big lunch. Instead of climbing, the kids elected to go back down to the waterfront to sail and perhaps ride the giant float/tube again.
Because the floats were both broken, the scouts decided to get in these little two-man sail boats and sail into the river. Left alone on the dock, without even a buddy with which to swim in the bath-warm water, I elected to ride in the power boat with two scouts who were trying to learn to ski.
After both of the scouts had several tries, coming close to getting up on their skis, I was able to get in the water and ski myself, which was fun.
After dinner we set up some cones in a big field and started our own nine-player ultimate frisbee game. The teams were Mike, Tommy, Sammy, and Michela vs. Jamie (Michela’s dad who joined us for the day), Ryan, Maddie, Erin, and me. Our team got stomped 10 to 3. We were hoping to attract other interested players so that all of us could play on the same team, but most of the Venturers were at the pistol range. It was an intense game, and I think everyone had a great time. I was once again reminded that I am no longer 20. Following our game, we all sat around joking. I picked up blade of grass to put between my thumbs as a reed to make noise. All the other crew members started doing it too. Ryan went for loud and ugly, nearly coughing up a spleen. Maddie could actually play notes and did a pretty good job of emulating “To the Colors,” the bugle call used at morning and evening formations at Broad Creek.
As we were getting ready to take a shower, “Bongo,” one of the camp commissioners, told us that they had set up a camp fire in our camp site and wondered why none of the Venturers were participating. As I mentioned earlier most of the Venturers were at the pistol range, so this was just a matter of one too many simultaneous events. We told him we were going to take showers and then would join the program; however, they were filing the pool, which meant there was no pressure in any of the showers, so we just wandered over to the camp fire. As we all had an early morning ahead of us, we all elected to go to bed before 10:00 PM.
